One of the reasons I keep returning to how Herman Cain and other black garbage pail kids black conservatives disgustingly suggest that African Americans are brainwashed, dumb, stupid, or zombies (and this why they vote for the Democrats) is because such claims are a slap to the face of our citizenship--a claim on national belonging earned in blood--and the ways in which we have helped to perfect American democracy.

Moreover, the argument by white conservatives and their black conservative lapdogs that African Americans are tricked or bamboozled into voting for the Democrats is doubly problematic because it harnesses the image of black people as childlike and simple--a group not fit for the American democratic project--better suited for a life of toil and labor on the plantation, content to serve White folks (with a toothy grin), as opposed to leading a country.

In turn, this argument reinforces the age old idea that of all groups in America, black folks are not suited for citizenship. When Cornell Belcher asks, "what if Jewish folks were called brainwashed by a political candidate? How would the media respond?" he hits the nail on the head and exposes a racist and white supremacist assumption about black freedom, dignity, and personhood, one which still lingers on into the Age of Obama.

I suspect that if a major candidate dared to suggest Jewish folks were brainswashed all hell would break loose--and rightly so. If a major candidate dared to suggest that white working class voters or Christian Evangelicals were brainwashed into voting for Republicans the Tea Party GOP would become apoplectic just as they did when President Obama meekly observed that some in Red State America are blinded by "guns, god, and religion."

But in America, the white racial frame is the de facto state of normal. Thus, there is silence when the citizenship and political sophistication of black Americans is impugned. Why? Because many Whites (and some others) would take such a claim as a given, a nothing to see here, Star Wars inspired move along moment.

Herman Cain and other Black Conservatives are human puppets who eagerly sit bare bottomed on the naked lap of Whiteness: thus they give a pass for these racist assumptions, as they excuse make and enable a distorted and warped black image of black humanity, an image that is soothing and a good fit for the racial depravities of the White (Conservative) Mind.

Thursday, September 29, 2011

When I come upon a compelling find on Youtube I like to share it with you all.

Obama's Racist Black Theology is entertaining. It is skillful in how it presents decontextualized information in a manner which validates the priors of its audience while maintaining a veneer of scholarly rigor and critical distance. Great stuff. Even better propaganda for the low information Tea Party Conservative crowd.

There are some real gems here: Little did I know that the movie Independence Day was based upon the teachings of Nation of Islam's founder Fard Muhammad. Nor did I know that Black Israelites were praying for a space ship to arrive on the day of Obama's election in order to carry the elect few off into the cosmos. I smiled at the walk down memory lane that was the ridiculousness of Khalid Muhammad's promo on white folks and Apartheid.

Obama's Racist Black Theology also represents the sickness that is white racism mated with Right-wing zealotry in the Age of Obama. While reasonable folks shook their heads at the Birthers and all of the other assorted crazy talk by Conservatives that the President is a closet Socialist or is controlled by some voodoo magic from his dead Kenyan father, the agitprop antics of the Tea Party GOP and their foot soldiers is no laughing matter.

Our society is sick; right wing reactionary politics are a symptom of the disease. Moreover, because conservatism and racism are one in the same in America, the election of the country's first black President has freed both to interact in a synergistic manner where "conspiranoids" and a fantastic combination of Ayn Randian dystopian politics and Right-wing Christian Nationalism work through the old ether of white racial resentment to create an utterly dysfunctional political culture.

The Right-wing populists who lapped at the trough of the Reverend Wright controversy and who daily suggest that white folks are oppressed and losing their country to those Others, are not too distant from the imaginary offered by the Obama's Racist Black Theology video.

Bachmann, Perry, and the rogues gallery that is the Tea Party GOP Presidential field would find much to agree with there.

The lunatic Right and the mainstream Republican Party are both similarly detached from reality (many believe in Christian Nationalism; that God tells them to run for high office; prayer controls the economy; science is trumped by fantasy; and folks like pseudo-historian David Barton have "proven" America is founded as a Christian republic).

Doubling down, the lunatic Right and the mainstream Republican Party also both possess an instinctive disgust and revulsion at the very personhood of Barack Obama. And faith trumps all, such that matters of fact and empiricism are overridden by--what are for all intents and purposes--practical beliefs in superstition and magic on matters ranging from the economy, to tax policy, to science, and foreign affairs.

In reflecting on the Reverend Wright affair it did not matter that few if any of Obama's detractors actually read anything of substance about black liberation theology, or took the time to actually engage in a substantive way with Dr. Cone. Nor, did the Right ever critically reflect on Reverend Wright's truth telling about America's history of abuses both at home and abroad.

Reality is dead. Long live the triumph of ideology, fantasy, and Orwellian doublespeak over the world of facts and reason.

When watching videos such as Obama's Racist Black Theology, listening to Right-wing talk radio, or checking in on Fox News, I am reminded that they offer a caricature of reality which fulfills the fantasies of American Authoritarians.

In all, for that and other reasons I do not envy Obama his job.

Consider for a moment the tasks at hand: Barack Obama has to quadrangulate between rabid conservatives who see him as grotesque and monstrous (both because he is a Democrat and also because he had the sheer nerve to be a black man who ran for the Office of President and won), white liberals who want him to be Shaft or 50 Cent, and none too few black folks with unreasonable expectations that he is a messiah who has disappointed them, leaving Black America a lost/found tribe in the desert.

"African-Americans have been brainwashed into not being open minded, not even considering a conservative point of view," Cain said on CNN's "The Situation Room" in an interview airing Wednesday between 5-7 p.m. ET. "I have received some of that same vitriol simply because I am running for the Republican nomination as a conservative. So it's just brainwashing and people not being open minded, pure and simple."

Perhaps, I will be judged harshly for making him the story of the week back in February 2011 where my short piece on Alternetgot him some shine from the Right-wing blogosphere and Fox News. Hell, maybe some will praise me for saying what needed to be said and by doing it unapologetically.

Months later, I still consider him an object of great fascination for he is the embodiment of a darkly tragic, and indeed quite painful part of the African American experience in this country that many are loathe to acknowledge: retreat; assimilation; cowardice; and accommodation as a practical type of surrender in the face of white supremacy is a survival tactic deployed by some who are born the Other.

We are not proud of this fact. We discuss it in quiet whispers and scorn those who chose that path. Nevertheless, this dynamic is real as some long ago realized the utility of white patronage as a means to help navigate the perils of the colorline.

Alas, and without regret, I stand by my controversial claim that Herman Cain is a racial projection from the deepest part of the White Conservative Id. In all, Herman Cain is a "good one," he who does not challenge white folks on racism or dare to speak truth to power.

Although I am very familiar with the Black Conservative script where people of color who do not vote Republican are viewed as being zombies, mentally defective, and "slaves" on the "Democrat Plantation," sitting, waiting for Black Conservatives to play Harriet Tubman as they lead us to the promised land and the Great White Father that is the Tea Party GOP, I still find such an argument loathsome and a rape of history.

Why? Because such claims stand in the face of overwhelming data on the sophistication of black voters and our role in making American democracy whole. And as a practical matter, such arguments by black Conservatives that other black folks are stupid and dumb ignores a basic fact: maybe African Americans as a group have made a rational choice to support the Democratic Party because of its policy positions? No trickery is needed; no slight of hand is necessary.

Herman Cain's pronouncements about black inferiority and lack of political sophistication are the echoes of history. History teaches us again and again my friends, as in the Age of Obama a prominent Black Conservative gives life to stereotypes about the simple mindedness of African Americans and paints a picture of a people not fit for democracy.

This is the irony of all ironies: in post-racial America an African American Tea Party GOP front runner named Herman Cain can channel the worst sentiments of the white supremacist tracts of the 19th and 20th century as he belittles the black community while fulfilling the fantasies of the White Conservative Soul.

Thomas Dixon Jr., author of the racist novel The Clansman (and basis of the film Birth of a Nation) would be proud.

Fate is a trickster. History lives on as it is channeled through surprising totems and oracles such as folks like the Tea Party GOP's best black friend Mr. Herman Cain:

Since the dawn of history the Negro has owned the continent of Africa rich beyond the poet's fancy, crunching acres of diamonds beneath his bare black feet. Yet he never picked one up from the dust until a White man showed him its light. His land swarmed with powerful and docile animals, yet he never built a harness, cart or sled.

A hunter by necessity, he never made an axe, spear or arrowhead worth preserving beyond the moment of its use. He lived as an ox, content to graze for an hour. In a land of stone and timber, he never carved a block, sawed a foot of lumber or built a house save of broken sticks and mud.

With league on league of ocean strand and miles of inland seas, for 4,000 years he watched their surface ripple under the wind, heard the thunder of the surf on his beach, the howl of the storm over his head, gazed on the dim blue horizons calling him to worlds that lie beyond, and yet he never dreamed of a sail. He lived as his fathers lived - stole his food, worked his wife, sold his children, ate his brother, content to drink, sing, to dance, and sport as the ape.

And this creature, half child, half animal, the creature of impulse, whim and conceit, pleased with a rattle, tickled with a straw; a being who left to his will, roams at night and sleeps in the day, whose speech knows no word of love, whose passions once aroused, are as the fury of the tiger - they have set this thing to rule over the Southern people ... Merciful God ... it surpasses human belief."

Tuesday, September 27, 2011

First, I would like to thank the good folks over at Crooks and Liars for giving us some shine on Monday. The love is always appreciated. For those readers new to WARN I wish you a sincere welcome.

As regulars know, I occasionally break kayfabe and write about my failures and successes in the classroom. I learn more from the former than the latter; and of course the former provides far more fodder for humor and laughter than those small victories I occasionally enjoy.

I don't fancy myself one of those change a life by leading a college class type of instructors. Those who teach at the primary and secondary school level have more solid claims on that power than those who teach at colleges and universities. Why? Most of the answer lies in the fact that we live in an age where a college degree is obligatory. Thus, we deal more with snowflakes who are clocking in time for the necessary credits, than we do with young intellectuals who believe that knowledge and learning can be transformative.

All those qualifiers noted, there are still moments where I have to repress a smile as a student has a lightbulb moment. These instances of critical self-awareness can come from growth where before there was weakness and intellectual flaccidity; these same moments can also occur when a student realizes that they played themselves, their priors now dispelled, and basic fictions about how the world works beyond their own ego upset.

Because I am a sadist I like the first, but I revel in the latter...forgive me that trait for I was trained by Jesuits.

This quarter I am blessed with a good group of students. Although many are still finding their way, for the most part they are engaged and curious. I am doubly fortunate to have an arch-conservative as my interlocutor. There is no malice, this student simply asks good questions which proceed from a set of ideological priors that he has yet to realize are not universal. Moreover, my conservative charge has yet to realize that not all opinions are created equal, and that Fox News talking point conservatism is utterly dishonest as it is based precisely on a rejection of empirical reality in the pursuit of a narrow political agenda.

In short, said student is good fun because his questions keep me on my toes.

To this point in class, we have had two exchanges which speak to how the mythologies of American political culture are taken as truths by those more conservatively oriented and that reveal how Conservatism is bankrupt as an ideology, in this, our time of the Great Recession.

The first moment came in our discussing the myth of meritocracy, American exceptionalism, and the Great Recession where he recycled the standard story of how America is a great country of opportunity, the best country in the world in fact, as well as the most productive, innovative, and most dynamic economy that has ever been seen on this planet.

I queried, "how does the Great Recession and the fact that America has decreasing rates of intergenerational mobility, a shrinking middle class, and is solidly subpar in education, health, and many other measures, complicate your narrative of American greatness?"

He replied, taking a pause to reconcile rhetoric with facts, "these problems are just part of the business cycle, and no big deal because they are normal."

My reply, "can we tell those folks who are now structurally unemployed through no fault of their own that they can eat the business cycle when they are hungry? Is there barbeque sauce with that meal?"

My point was a simple one, and one I stress often--the world of theory exists relative to the world of facts...and real people's experiences. If you overlook this dynamic then you are only getting part of the story.

This was just a lead-in and preamble for our most recent "teachable moment."

Homelessness is a frightening concept that most folks of any age would rather look away from than acknowledge. To accommodate this mass societal version of the bystander effect, there are cultural scripts with the standard players of "the deserving" and "undeserving poor," where "those people" are drug addicts or "lazy," and consequently they "deserve" their position in life.

Who, especially among the young with an ostensibly bright future ahead of them, would want to entertain how the myth of meritocracy may leave them one of the working poor, a paycheck or illness away from the street, panhandling on a corner, couch surfing, or living in a car?

In class, we discussed these dynamics and how the new poor are the formerly middle class, and how/if this will shake up public policy and political alignments in the United States? Given the old joke that a Republican is a Democrat who got robbed, and that a Democrat is a Republican who lost their job, what will the Great Recession hold for the future of American politics and the two party system?

An important detail for context and flavor: The students in my classes run the gamut from working class, to the poor, to the solidly middle class, and also include a sprinkling of the born on the third base of life trustafarians who believe they hit a triple in life crowd. Consequently, our discussions about class and social mobility are almost always quite compelling.

During our most recent conversation, my conservative friend chimed in that the American middle class is not becoming the new poor and homeless, that one can work and make it if they only applied themselves, and that this talk about the new poor is exaggerated and flies in the face of the American dream. It simply can't be true. Impossible.

I shared some data on poverty, the record numbers of people on food stamps in America, and provided some context for the specious argument that the American poor have it well off (and the bigger game of Tea Party GOP Ayn Randian libertarianism on behalf of struggling millionaires) as a frame and meme in defense of austerity for the rest of us while the kleptocrats get to keep all of their wealth.

A student raised his hand and asked if he could comment. He looked to our arch-conservative friend and explained that his father was a construction worker who owned a nice home. They were not rich, but he and his dad were solidly middle class. This all came undone with the crash of the housing market, an illness, and the utter collapse of the economy in the town where they lived. After the savings was gone, and the retirement fund spent, our honest and sharing student explained that he had to move in with a friend's family while his father lived in a van.

The latter's only salvation was the kindness of several strangers, migrant day laborers, who had a small studio apartment which they allowed him to move in to as it became dangerously cold in the fall and winter months.

After this moment of sharing you could hear a pin drop. No response or retort was offered. My conservative friend sat silenced, wheels turning but finding no traction. To his benefit, he was the beneficiary of the great time keeper's charity as class mercifully ended.

I do not know if that was a tranformative moment for this young arch-conservative. Perhaps, it was sustenance for the other students in the class whose families are also struggling in the Great Recession, as from that moment of sharing they knew they were not alone. I simply smiled because I felt that some good had come from that exchange.

I also smiled as that class further reinforced my allegiance to Black Pragmatism.

At present, one of the great divides in American politics during the Age of Obama is an utter failure by those on the Right, and conservatives at large, to have any sympathy or empathy for those less fortunate, who may be different from them, or somehow the Other. Most conservatives cannot imagine that it could be them who is downsized, unemployed, or in need of the social safety net to keep a roof over their head or food in the childrens' bellies.

The irony of course is that most of the Right, and the Tea Party GOP especially, benefit greatly from the social contract and want to keep supports such as social security, medicare, and medicaid in place--but only for folks like them, within their narrow tribe of "real Americans" and those suitably "patriotic" and nationalistic. Others can be damned for they are "unproductive," "liberals," "lazy," or practice/benefit from "class warfare" against the rich.

We shall see if the exchange in my class, a moment where a free market trickle down conservative met the face that is the human consequence and collateral damage of robber baron, dysfunctional unfettered capitalism, will change how a young arch-conservative thinks about politics. It probably will not. But we sensible and reasonable folks who believe that education can serve the interests of the Common Good can hope and dream just a little bit.

Saturday, September 24, 2011

When you figure out why this man is brought to tears by the Star Spangled Banner, you will finally understand the appeal of the Tea Party GOP.

Moreover, when you figure out why this man is crying you will begin to grasp the difficulties faced by appeals to reason and empirically driven reality in trying to beat back the emotion, faith, and fear based nationalism of the Republican Party.

While it is easy to mock, scorn, and point out the odd mix of Constitutional Fetishism and love of dressing in Colonial era clothing that is common among the Tea Party brigands, the faux populist imaginary of the New Right is actually quite compelling, and thus, it demands a bit of critical attention.

We know a few things about the Tea Party GOP. They are an astoturf organization driven by corporate money working in the interest of austerity policies and the shock doctrine. The Tea Party is made up of Republicans on steroids, and their members' policy positions are simply more extreme versions of Conservatism writ large. Racial resentment and fear of non-whites, immigrants, and any Other drives the Tea Party GOP's political imagination.

In sum, while allowing for these facts there remain two points that have gone relatively uncommented upon.

First, the Tea Party is easily lampooned; however, their songs, folksy misspelled posters, embrace of ignorance as authenticity, and love of costumes are a type of political theater. Consequently--and this is a point that many in the pundit classes and other professional bloviators seem to miss--"the show is the thing." Or as good ol' Jim Ross from the World Wrestling Federation is fond of saying, sometimes "you got to sell the sizzle and not the steak."

Consequently, reasoned discussions of policy and good governance are made secondary to a sense of belonging. For folks who feel alienated, scared, and "want to take their America back" (from "the blacks, the gays, the atheists, the Socialists, the liberals" etc.) a sense of belonging is a powerful salve for alienation and anomie.

A key point. When the ghouls in the audience at the last three Republican debates howled for murder, death, and in support of hatred towards Americans who happen not to be straight, they were marking out the boundaries of their political community. Their cheers were not those of outliers; they were the id of a community that stood silent in complicity and agreement.

Second, and as I argued elsewhere, the Tea Party with its hostile faux populism is a cult-like organization whose ethos has infected the Republican Party as a whole. Emotion trumps reason. Faith has been mated with ideology to create a worldview that is immune from critical interrogation and intervention. Heretics are burned at the proverbial stake of Right-wing talk radio and Fox News. And ideological orthodoxy is the prime directive, even if it means destroying the U.S. economy (as was seen during the debt ceiling hostage taking by the Tea Party GOP), or believing in fictions such as cutting the federal budget in a time of the Great Recession will magically create economic growth.

The connective tissue of these two observations is as follows. The Tea Party GOP effectively marshals emotion, nostalgia, faith, anti-intellectualism, and sentimentality. They in turn mate these elements with themes of "American exceptionalism," nationalism and "patriotism." This brew is reinforced and sustained by the Right-wing echo chamber and its modus operandi of epistemic closure.

This is a potent mix for reactionary conservatives because the political opponents of the Tea Party and the New Right are effectively swinging at air. How do you land a body blow on ether? To political fictions driven by emotions that are only reinforced by their opposition's appeal to empirical reality? In all, how do you fight an idea...however wrong headed and ill advised it may be?

President Obama's rediscovery of populism will do nothing to reach the extreme ideologues on the Right. That is a given. However, the chaff and distractions that the Tea Party GOP and their puppet masters have created, ones of false equivalence and a magically infused faith based politics that extends beyond the walls of the church and into public policy as a whole, is damnably challenging because of how it mucks up and befouls the public discourse.

How do we reach the low information swing voters who are not equipped to navigate this morass? In the Age of Obama do liberals, progressives, pragmatists, and reasonable conservatives even have the capacity and will to spin effective narratives with which to counter the fictitious, faith based, emotion infused appeals of the Tea Party GOP?

Friday, September 23, 2011

I usually try to maintain the trust which exists between those who search these Internets and we who can see the stats on yee old wayward travelers. I will break that bargain today in the interest of a cheap laugh or two and because some of the more recent keyword searches that bring folks to WARN have been gems that demand a communal chuckle...and some group analysis.

The keywords are in green. My observations and comments follow underneath.

At least 10 times a day someone asks this question. Is there some cultural movement afoot I am not privy to, some Kanye West meets Cee Lo black hipster douchebaggery that necessitates having a shag haircut?

The Tea Party GOP keeps on showing us who they are and will continue to be in the future. The supporters of and audience for the chicken hawk warmonger robust militarists 2012 Republican presidential candidates booed an active duty soldier serving in Iraq. Why? Because he happens to not be "straight."

If you listen to the Republican candidates and their bigoted vitriol towards Stephen Hill, there are two points that have been made immediately clear.

First, this crop of Republicans and their public would have opposed racially integrating the U.S. military in 1948. They are dead-enders, on the wrong side of history.

Of this fact I have not doubt.

Second, the Republican Tea Party GOP is playing for a very narrow share of the electorate. Students of politics know that you run for the fences in the primaries and then go back to the center for the general election. But, and here is the dysfunction of American politics in the Age of Obama, at present the Right-wing rage machine is driven by more than mere partisanship: they hate the symbol of social change and inclusive citizenship that is Barack Obama. There are no apologies or embarrassment for this sentiment.

Moreover, while the pundit classes may talk about how the American electorate may appear to be increasingly "sorted" and "polarized," the embrace of the monster's ball antics of (now counting) the last three Republican debates signals to a divide that is even greater than what the Culture Wars portended in the early 1990s.

A thought. During the Civil Rights Movement and the radical 1960s it was well known that the U.S. government infiltrated Left and Progressive organizations with agent provocateurs who radicalized those groups into taking actions--often violent ones--they otherwise would never have considered.

As I watch the Tea Party GOP further devolve in each of their primary debates, I have to wonder if there are not outside forces pushing them towards the cartoonish levels of political thuggery and mean spiritedness they have demonstrated to this point. Or is the Tea Party GOP just showing us who they are and always have and will be?

I am happy for what I saw as the reveal is an important one. I also weep for what I saw and what it signals about the health of our democracy.

Thursday, September 22, 2011

As a ghetto nerd, I am obligated to respond to any news item which purports to connect President Barack Obama with an iconic comic book character. Moreover, a while back I offered the suggestion that Michael Steele, former Chairman of the GOP, was actually the embodiment of the character known as John Henry Irons. I was quite rightly (and quickly) corrected by commentator Heavy Armor that Steele was more akin to the character known as Bizarro Superman.

So you tell me, readers of WARN and other travelers, is President Obama actually Clark Kent, a weak, malleable, chronic compromiser, a running critique of the whole human race?

Or is President Obama actually Kal-El, the man who we know as Superman, and he is playing a deep game, lest we be afraid of his greatness of strength and fortitude of character?

Please listen carefully to Bill a.k.a David Carradine's soliloquy on Superman. I would suggest that we can easily extend his pithy words to our sitting President.

In all, the differences between Obama, Superman, Clark Kent, and Kal-El are nuanced. They are also a great example of popular culture as politics; thus, popular culture is made into a useful lens for thinking about basic questions of presidential leadership and governance.

If you're President Obama, you've had a bit of a transformation. That is, from the mild-mannered Clark Kent into, well, Superman.

Or something like that.

When we last left this story, President Obama was trying to be the measured adult in the room, compromising over the debt ceiling to get a deal. In the end, it wasn't the "grand bargain" that Obama wanted. Liberals argued that it was awful, too -- chastising the president for negotiating with himself. And Republicans complained that they needed more spending cuts. And, oh, by the way, they still wanted to repeal health care reform.

In other words, an unsatisfactory experience for all.

So when Obama came back to D.C. this fall, the feeling inside the White House was that something had to change. The bad news: Mr. Adult (aka Mr. Compromise) had sunk to new lows in the ratings. The good news: Congress had sunk even lower. Way lower. Then House Speaker John Boehner gave a speech outlining his demands for the deficit reduction "supercommittee."

Top of the list: no new taxes.

Shocking, I know.

That about did it. The White House figured it had no partner for peace. The man who had almost signed on to the grand bargain -- with some tax increases and entitlement cuts -- wasn't about to come back to the table anytime soon.

The next step: play the game.

The president outlined his demand for the debt reduction supercommittee: no spending cuts for the middle class without commensurate tax increases on the wealthy. No proposals for long-term entitlement reform. But there was a catchy bumper sticker: the Buffett Rule. Billionaires should not pay a lower tax rate than the rest of us.

It's not intellectually satisfying. Nor does it improve the chances for a deal out of the supercommittee that can get anywhere in Congress. It's politics, plain and simple.

In fact, the strategy does one big thing: It reunites the president with the base of the Democratic Party, which finally had something to cheer. When Barack Obama came out swinging this week, threatening to veto any deficit reduction measure without a balance of new taxes and spending cuts, there was joy among liberals. Obama had finally come home.

For the rest of us, well, it was a dismal peek at reality. Who can really fault the White House for playing politics with Republicans who have refused to cut the big deals? After all, the GOP presidential candidates, by and large, are still complaining that Congress agreed to raise the debt ceiling. After Boehner lay down his laws, Obama had to do the same. He could no longer negotiate with himself.

So he joined the game. Maybe it's the opening salvo, and maybe something will come of this kabuki. But there is a final calculation here: if nothing comes out of the supercommittee, the president would be less damaged than the Congress.

As for the rest of us, we're still Waiting for Superman. The real one.

There has not been so large a portion of Americans in poverty since 1993. But this time the growth in poverty is different, hitting whites and suburbia harder than it did during the early 1990s slump. African Americans, by contrast, appear to be doing better.

The suburban poverty rate is 11.8 percent, a level not seen since 1967.

African Americans appear to be faring relatively better than they did in the early 1990s. In 1993 the poverty rate for African Americans reached 33.1 percent. Last year it was 27.4 percent.

It's not entirely clear why African Americans are faring so much better in this recession than in the last, at least in terms of poverty. It may be that social and economic progress in the intervening years has left African Americans less vulnerable to economic downturns.

A key factor in the rise in suburban poverty may be the fact that the housing market has played such a central role in the economic slump.

Many suburbs have seen a vast amount of wealth erased by declining housing markets and mortgage foreclosures, resulting in a great deal of economic dislocation. Since white Americans are more likely to own homes than African Americans, this could also explain why whites have fared worse than they did in the 1990s while African Americans have fared better.

Some observers were shocked and surprised by the behavior of the Tea Party Republicans and its supporters during the primary debates. Others have complained that CNN's surrender of air time to the Tea Party is a compromise of journalistic ethics.

I would suggest that to the latter, CNN performed a public service by providing a window into the Tea Party Republican soul. And to the former, there should be no surprise here: in the Age of Obama, contemporary Conservatism has surrendered itself to a particularly virulent, dystopian, and pathologically hyper-individualist state of nature, "all against many," type of populist Right-wing ideology.

From the proclamations of Republican officials that the unemployed are poor because they lack spirit and drive, an Orwellian political vocabulary of "job creators" and "non-productive citizens," opines that poor people in America have it relatively easy (thus austerity politics ought not to be that painful), and a belief that the social safety net (basic programs such as Social Security and unemployment insurance) has destroyed the United States and made people "lazy," contemporary Conservatism has fully embraced a politics that are utterly and totally bereft of human empathy.

My claim that the Republican Party is a death cult demands some explication and transparency.

"Cult" is a signal to the narrow thinking and state of epistemic closure that has come to dominate conservative politics. As I have suggested elsewhere, populist Conservatism is also colored by an unflappable instinct that faith should be the guiding principle in political decision making--what is a belief in the unprovable--that fuels a theocratic vision of public policy under the umbrella of Christian Nationalism and Dominionism.

Because the Tea Party GOP's foot soldiers, as well as the Bachmanns, Palins, Perrys, and Cains believe a thing to be true--often in the face of all available evidence and data on the subject--it must in turn be as they imagine. Reality must always bend to their will: the anti-intellectualism of populist Conservatism demands that the facts are to be damned; empirical reality is to be discounted as some type of plot by the mainstream media, "liberals," or "elites."

The cultish behavior of the Republican Party is made manifest by a rigidly orthodox political ideology. Those who do not pray at the mantle (and in the approved position) are labeled heretics. Any conservative who challenges the far Right agenda or believes in pragmatism and normal politics, i.e. working with President Obama and the Democrats in the interest of the Common Good, is labeled a traitor.

Likewise, those who dare to suggest that taxes should be increased on the wealthiest Americans to increase revenue, or that the government has a role to play in providing some relief during the worst economy since the Great Depression, are cast out of the tribe for daring to utter words and hold ideas that are verboten to the high acolyte "true believers" in the Republican Party.

The "death" in my use of the phrase "death cult" is both literal and symbolic. The symbolic aspect works in a number of ways. First, it is present in the Right's support for rampant militarism abroad and how the Tea Party GOP has skillfully used the "national security" narrative, the mass public's fear of terrorism, and an almost pornographic appeal to the tragedy of September 11th to seduce low information conservative voters and Independents into supporting their political agenda.

Second, "compassionate" conservatives are against extending basic income supports and humanitarian assistance to the neediest Americans. As recent data suggests, poverty leads to death and a diminished life span. When the Tea Party Republicans stand against food stamps, unemployment insurance, Medicaid, and other programs for those displaced by the Great Recession, through actions both direct and indirect, they are in fact killing people.

The literal embrace of death by the Tea Party Republicans works as follows. When supporters of the Republican Party howl that they "want to take their America back" they are signaling to an America that is dead and gone. Their halcyon colored Leave it to Beaver dreams of a country where Whiteness was unchallenged and central in all things, and where "those people" stayed out of the way (or were preferably either invisible or fully subservient to the whims of white folks) is gone.

With immigration, the "browning of America," and a black President, the white racial frame is upset. The cognitive map of the Tea Party Republican faithful is forced to deal with the unthinkable--that in some impossible way they could be marginalized in "their own" country. Of course, this is untrue. But the fear is real and palpable.

The death of American Empire is a close cousin to the death of the Tea Party Republicans' memory of a country that never really was. America is facing unprecedented challenges from China. We rank increasingly low on educational attainment, class mobility, health care, and other measures. Where we are exceptional, in our debt and military spending on a bloated imperial project, the United States looks more like the British at the turn of the 20th century, a country in decline and struggling to manage how to fall with grace as opposed to in a hellish crash.

The Tea Party base is also quite literally dying. Although the fancy social science phrase is "generational replacement," the reality is that the Tea Party is overwhelmingly comprised of white Americans who are much older than the general public. As America changes and they walk off into the sunset to receive their just rewards, the political values and beliefs which are a product of a political moment long past will quite likely become less of a force in American politics. Death for the Tea Party Republicans is a fact that lives in the present.

Tea Party Republicans are brought to a mouth frothing rage and madness by fictions such as Birtherism and a belief that whites are oppressed in the Age of Obama because a black man is President. They rage about "class warfare" but look at unions, the working class, and the poor as the causes of America's economic calamity as opposed to the kleptocrats and the rich who have benefited from one of the most maldistributive economies in the world. In their eyes, government is the problem and never the solution. The State is to be torn down by secession and revolt. Tea Party GOP is angry about everything, but they do not know how to transform that energy into productive behavior and good governance.

There is an additional metaphor at work in my suggestion that the Tea Party GOP is a death cult. Despite claims to the contrary, the Tea Party is not a grassroots movement. They are funded by corporate interests such as the Koch brothers. These conservative corporate elites who drive the faux populism of the New Right are acting as the hand on the Ouija board, a group of necromancers who play with death as channeled through the Republican Tea Party.

Or stated differently, the Tea Party is the poltergeist of American politics. It is angry and destructive. The Tea Party poltergeist was summoned up by a crisis of faith, a decline in America's standing in the world, and a system shock brought about by the combination of the Great Recession, failed misadventures in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as poor political leadership at home.

However, I do think that Americans in this political moment are witness to a crisis in spirit and an existential malaise. We are a country in pain. We as a people are angst-ridden. The Ayn Randian dream of the Tea Party GOP, the death cult that they are, is not a solution to the challenges America faces in the 21st century.

The goal of Republicans and populist conservatives in the present is a victory at all costs, one that is Pyrrhic and couched in the language of a glorious struggle or a political holy war, right-wing jihad, and free-market austerity crusade. Consequently, an exorcism is the only viable solution to this abhorrent type of abnormal politics by the Tea Party GOP, one brought about by their fixation on the politics of death. The Tea Party Republicans will cheer death, just as they did during the last two debates. And the Tea Party will bring the roof down upon us all as their poltergeist-like politics works to destroy the common good.

The challenge for liberals, progressives, pragmatists, and reasonable conservatives is how to reclaim life, and by doing so America's future, from the jaws of the death cult that is the populist-infused Republican Party.

Monday, September 19, 2011

Matlock was meh. But, I used to love me some Murder She Wrote. I also liked Perry Mason...even more so once I found out that Raymond Burr was a fem cross-dresser.

On Alternet, a commenter noted that Christopher A. Jackson, the producer of the "It's Free Swipe Yo EBT" music video, is the owner of a military apparel company with (obvious) ties to the DOD. As you go down the rabbit hole, he is also connected to a shell company/false front op called CIA Records which apparently backed the project and then went "black" and "off board."

Initially, I would have bet money that some far Right Conservative group such as Family Leader had funded this welfare queen "satire." Instead, it could be that Christopher Jackson is in the same proverbial building, but just has a different office number.

Let's crowd source this one. If any of you with more technical skills and insight into these matters than me can dig something up on the backers of the "It's Free Swipe Yo EBT" video by all means please pass it along. If one of you is particularly skilled with Photoshop and can generate an overwrought diagram which connects all of the dots in the EBT video puzzle in a manner akin to the JFK conspiracy that too would be appreciated.

Who knows? Maybe this video is the Willie Lynch letter of our time? Could it be a twisted conspiracy that explains all things wrong in the black community? A nefarious plot to create a dependent class by launching an assault on our subliminal mindstates?

I do wonder what Brother X-Squared would say about these developments. I just may have to ask him...

Werner Herzog's Bear, one of my friends and a frequent guest poster here at WARN has a gem of a piece (it is efficient, dense, and nuanced) on his new site Notes from the Ironbound that you should all check out. Yes, that is a poorly parsed sentence as you should 1) both go to his new website and 2) also read and circulate his newest post that I am shilling for here.

I have a few other guest posts forthcoming this week which all lead to my sharing a good to and fro with a colorblind racist. I have teased our exchange for a bit. Events interfered with my posting the dialogue. I will make a remedy soon enough.

Werner's analysis of the Tea Party GOP's place in American political culture and their misunderstanding of their own wellsprings is spot on. More importantly, he is one of the best academics writing about politics and culture in the blogging game right now. I don't promote lazy and raggedy folks so you know that Werner is on point, and he certainly deserves a much wider audience. Werner's only sin is not writing enough...which I hope that he will correct soon enough.

His essay follows:

The Party of Lincoln Becomes the Party of Jackson

I recently read Gore Vidal's Burr, something I'd been meaning to do for years, and now I've got early American history on the brain.

The Tea Party and others on the political right are big on swearing their allegiance to the Constitution and the Founders, but are typically pretty vague when it comes to the details. The main reason, of course, it that when they say "Constitution" and "Founders" they mean faith in a political Bible and its patriarchs. They possess beliefs founded in belief itself, rather than reason or any knowledge of history.

That tendency to reduce politics to religion is why Enlightenment thinkers on the order of Franklin, Madison, and Jefferson would cringe in horror at the Tea Party's illiteracy and wild-eyed evangelicalism. Franklin was famously comsopolitan, and in his later life was more at home in Paris than Philadelphia, unlike today's uber-patriots who seem proud of their provincialism. Madison warned of the dangers of political factions taking over the levers of power, and evinced a strong desire to keep populism at bay.

Although modern day Tea Partiers might appreciate his small government inclinations, Jefferson advocated a wall of separation between church and state. To top it all off, George Washington was a committed Federalist who tried to increase the power of the federal government, especially in his decision, at Alexander Hamilton's prompting, to assume the debts the states incurred during the Revolution. Ron Paul he was not.

Yet the GOPers still claim fealty to the Founders. Perhaps they do, but to the wrong figures. Our contemporary right-wing populism owes little to the founders, who mostly disdained popular participation in politics, and much more to the Jacksonian era. (This is of course highly ironic, since Jackson is one of the founders of the Democratic party!) Unlike the Enlightenment thinkers of the founding generation, Jackson and his ilk cared little for deep thought.

In fact, they disdained it, and saw intellectual pursuits as inherently suspicious. After all, how dare those pointy-headed know it alls tell us what's right and what's wrong? Whenever I hear mainstream candidates for president deny global warming and evolution, I think of Old Hickory in all of his bigoted ignorance, especially his destruction of the Bank of the United States against all evidence of its necessity.

Jackson's decision helped bring on the Panic of 1837, just as the misbegotten economic religion of supply side has left us with an impoverished middle and working class unable to spend the money needed to restart the economy. Like their dark ancestor, modern Republicans replicate Jackson's provincialized nationalism, in which the only people who count are "real Americans."

And last but not least, they recall his bloody-mindedness. Jackson was famous in his day for his willingness to take lives, from those of his own soldiers to a man he shot to death in a duel to the Cherokee who perished in the ethnic cleansing known as The Trail of Tears. Recently modern day Republicans have made headlines by baying for blood at presidential debates, from the cheers for Rick Perry's bloody record of executions (including a man, Cameron Todd Willingham, who was most likely innocent) and urging that those without health insurance be thrown on the dung heap to die.

I'd like to think that the dark spirit of America's historical id could be exorcised, but in a culture where consumer is king and criticizing popular tastes, no matter how idiotic and debased, meets with the strictest condemnation, Jackson's ghost will remain with us. Whenever there are fearful white people who want to maintain their privileged position and beat down on others to do it, he will be there. As long as the Tea Party continues to stoke the flames of racial resentment, he will be there. Truth be told, Old Hickory's bigoted, violent, provincial, illiterate nature will always resonate with more Americans than the reasoned Enlightenment worldview of the Founders.

Friday, September 16, 2011

I do wonder though, how the ghouls at the Tea Party GOP debate on Monday who laughed at the thought of someone dying for lack of insurance would react to a man who has received criminally negligent care for his 150 pound testicles?

I also wonder what would have transpired if the moderators at the CNN debate had asked Ron Paul about care for an unlucky person whose genitals are so enlarged that he can barely leave the house? Would the charities and churches step up to help John, he who is plagued with edema of the testes?

Universal health care is a human rights issue. It is also a basic issue of economic efficiency where Americans receive some of the worst health care in the advanced industrialized world while spending the most for treatment.

To point, do check out John's entire interview on the Howard Stern. His experience is an ideal typical case that exemplifies all that is wrong with America's broken health care system.

When I hear stories such as this, it is abundantly clear that we are truly a laughing stock.

In all, I struggle to understand the following: how can the flag waving American exceptionalism crowd not feel any embarrassment and lower their heads in shame at the sorry state of medicine in these United States?

I have long known the answer.

Empathy is not a standing prior for Conservatives. Their reaction to the neediest, the most vulnerable, and the poor is proof of that fact. While Conservatives are fond of crowing about a truism which suggests that folks like them give the most to charity, I have long realized that such acts of "generosity" are vainglorious deeds of self-affirmation and not part of a principle of mutual aid and support in the interest of the Common Good.

Noted author and journalist Toure has conducted a parallel project with his book Whose Afraid of Post-Blackness? But he is much more patient than I am:

I asked my 105 interviewees, What is the most racist thing that has ever happened to you? The response I received most often was indicative of modern racism: The answer is unknowable. "I imagine it'd be a thing I don't even know ever happened," Aaron McGruder said. "It would be that opportunity that never manifested and I'll never know that it was even possible."

A decision is made in a back room or a high-level office, perhaps by someone you'll never see, about whether or not you get a job or a home loan or admission to a school. Or perhaps you'll never be allowed to know that a home in a certain area or a job is available. This is how modern institutional racism functions and it can weigh on and shape a black person differently than the more overt, simplistic racism of the past did.

In the post-Civil Rights era and the Age of Obama, a large portion of the public imagination views racism as the stuff of mean words and small minds. Racism is an anachronism. The Klan doesn't ride through the streets killing black people anymore; multiculturalism is now a lengua franca for the Generation X Millennial crowd; ultimately, racism is dead because there is a man who happens to be black in the White House.

The reality is much more challenging. Race still structures life chances for people of color. White privilege remains real into the 21st century as a type of property, material right, and psychological investment for white Americans.

But allowing for these facts, Americans still lack a vocabulary for speaking in a sophisticated and nuanced way about racism. Moreover, they also have a void in their cognitive map, one that obviates any capacity for seeing how structures and institutions impact opportunity as 1) Americans historically describe themselves as being middle class (both millionaires and the underclass alike); and 2) many still believe that the Horatio Alger myth is real, even while the wealth gap widens and class mobility has greatly decreased and hardened in this, our time of Great Recession.

In all, these factors buttress an appeal to the oft-heard phrase that all we need is a "national conversation on race" to finally slay the bugaboo of racism.

From the beer summit, to "teachable moments," and the omnipresence of multiculturalism and diversity programs in schools and workplaces, there is a persistent belief that some type of talk therapy will cathartically free the United States from the lingering shadows of white supremacy and make Dr. King's dream real.

Here is the misdirection: Americans have been talking about race for centuries. The result of this difficult dialogue has in some ways been transformative. In others ways, this national conversation on race has resulted in quite a bit of wasted time and energy. People of color have been talking back to Whiteness for centuries; Whiteness chooses either not to listen or to selectively hear that part of the exchange which is both most self-satisfying and self-legitimating. As one would reasonably expect, a unidirectional conversation can become a bit exhausting after more than just a few decades.

"The most racist experience you have," said Ben Jealous, president of the NAACP, "is the one that's worst, and the one that's worst is usually the one that transforms the way you look at the world." These moments of suddenly discovering the pain and lack of status and power that attends being black is what comedian Paul Mooney refers to as "a nigger wake-up call."

Skip Gates calls them "the scene of instruction" and he says they exist in classic black autobiographies from slavery to recent days. "For W.E.B. Dubois it was a little girl who wouldn't take his Valentine card," Gates said.

"For James Weldon Johnson in Autobiography of an Ex‑Colored Man it was when the teacher said, 'Would all the white scholars stand up,' and he stands up and she goes 'No, you can sit down.' It's always a moment of trauma. There's always something lacking, a deprivation that makes you realize what being black means."

[A question: is this an experience, one that those not of the Other--for a moment or a lifetime--can ever "get?"]

When people of color share their personal experiences with racism a routine in colorblind, pluralist America is enacted, one wherein the struggles to overcome the brutality and limitations imposed by white supremacy and the colorline have (quite rightly) been framed as a badge of national honor. The obsession with talking--if even in a tired ritual--about national problems is a function of a faith in consensus based politics, and a belief that reasonable people can participate in a discourse that produces a sensible outcome.

Stated more simply, where matters of identity are concerned, if "we" could just "understand" each other, things would inevitably have to get better.

It takes courage to share nakedly, with vulnerability, and with honesty. I would suggest that it does not take much courage to listen fairly. Likewise, when black and brown folks share our pain with the white public in a confessional about how racism has caused hurt (as well as substantive material, economic, and physical harm), it often serves as a detour from serious talk about power, institutions, and privilege--and what real justice would look like.

I appreciate Toure's project. But, I am also made quite tired by how black and brown folks have to share our experiences with white supremacy and racism in order to receive acknowledgement and validation of those experiences from white folks (and some others) by "educating" them about the realities of race in America.

History echoes. There was a scripted moment during the anti-slavery rallies held by Abolitionists where there would be a great reveal, a living, human example of the evils of white supremacy and the peculiar institution's gross wickedness. In that ritual, an escaped slave would take off his or her clothing in order to show the scars caused by the whip, the blade, or other foul instrument to the horror of all in attendance. The "what has racism done to you moment" in the post-Civil Rights era feels like a continuation of that script, but one with a far less generous, invested, and accepting audience.

For those sincere about true and substantive social justice, the "please tell me about racism/sexism/other ism moment" is also an error in tactics: it still plays to the veto power of the privileged and the in-group, where for every honest ear there are many more who want you, the sharer, to tell a story which they, the listener can't wait to invalidate for reasons of their own investment in the status quo and/or a belief that most people are "good" and all that "ism" talk is so much chaff and belly aching.

The script is consistent:

"You were overreacting." "It can't possibly be that bad." "How do you know that was their intent?" "I go through stuff like that all the time, what is the big deal?" "If you expect to see racism, you will find it, you need to just relax." And of course the classic, "you are being too sensitive!"

Here, the common refrain is that empathy and sympathy are dependent on sharing, or that communicating one's experiences are a prerequisite and prior for confronting challenging issues of social policy. And how can we make the world a better place if there are no efforts to talk about personal subjects across lines of human difference and identity?

In the year 2011, many of those white folks who are being spoken to just don't care to listen anymore, except when it is to borrow a lazy script where they discover "reverse racism," minimize the experiences of non-whites with prejudice and bigotry, or to steal Dr. King's radical vision and struggle for their own Right-wing, in defense of Whiteness, populist Conservative agenda.

Sorry folks, I just can't play along anymore. Those white folks on the right side of history have already heard the message and come along. Those others are deaf of ear, and there is nothing you can say to win them over.

Tips and Support Are Always Welcome

Who is Chauncey DeVega?

I have been a guest on the BBC, National Public Radio, Ring of Fire Radio, Ed Schultz, Sirius XM's Make it Plain, Joshua Holland's Alternet Radio Hour, the Thom Hartmann radio show, the Burt Cohen show, and Our Common Ground.

I have also been interviewed on the RT Network and Free Speech TV.

I am a contributing writer for Salon and Alternet.

My writing has also been featured by Newsweek, The New York Daily News, Raw Story, The Huffington Post, and the Daily Kos.

My work has also been referenced by MSNBC, The Washington Post, USA Today, The Atlantic, The Christian Science Monitor, the Associated Press, Chicago Sun-Times, Raw Story, The Washington Spectator, Media Matters, The Gothamist, Fader, XOJane, The National Memo, The Root, Detroit Free Press, San Diego Free Press, the Global Post, The Lost Angeles Blade as well as online magazines and publications such as Slate, The Week, The New Republic, Buzzfeed, Counterpunch, Truth-Out, Pacific Standard, Common Dreams, The Daily Beast, The Washington Times, The Nation, RogerEbert.com, Ebony, and The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Fox News, Breitbart, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Juan Williams, Herman Cain, Alex Jones, World Net Daily, Twitchy, the Free Republic, the National Review, NewsBusters, the Media Research Council, Project 21, and Weasel Zippers have made it known that they do not like me very much.